Although I dabbled in the massive online world of Second Life back when it was first becoming really popular 3 or 4 years ago, I didn't have time to really explore and didn't end up playing for long. It was not until Showtime made a big splash in SL by creating a virtual L Word island in the game a couple of years back that I ventured back in for another go. My passion for the immense virtual world comes and gos, but there is no denying that Second Life is an addition that’s hard to kick.To rehash a bit from a previous article I wrote about Second Life, for those unfamiliar with the game, Second Life is a huge, interactive online world populated by hundreds of thousands of people who spend ludicrous amounts of time and money living, well, a virtual second life. Unlike many online game worlds, Second Life is for the most part very much like the real world -- only more glamorous and fantasy-filled. Much like The L Word itself if you think about it.Inside the world of Second Life, you can buy land, build homes, run businesses, make and sell virtual products -- even fall in love, get laid (oh yes, you can indeed have wild, naked virtual sex in an incredible range of variations) and get married (in whatever order and with however many people you choose). Added to all of this, Second Life is based on a "real world" economy -- which means that money in the game (lindens) equals money in real life (dollars), and the two can be exchanged for each other via an online currency market.Second Life's real world economy is the major draw for some players who have big dreams of striking on the perfect virtual business and becoming one of the game's rare, legendary gamers who play full time for profit. Major real world companies like Coca-Cola, BMW, Dell and have created virtual presences in Second Life to push their real world products -- and to sell virtual copies of their goods to a gaming audience all too willing to pay real dollars for virtual playthings. Second Life even plays host to virtual embassies for countries like Sweden, Columbia and Estonia.Making money and promoting products and tourism is one thing, but many residents of Second Life are just there to have a good time. Thus real world and virtual businesses alike have to gear their goods toward entertaining their customers -- the Second Life players. Providing live entertainment, virtual toys, community gathering places, freebies and the like keeps players happily returning to company and player-run businesses, hopefully with their wallets in tow. One of the strongest tools in getting your brand recognized and remembered is tapping into Second Life's social factor -- the tendency of players to want to interact with each other, gather in groups for activities and build a virtual "lifestyle" within the game. That's exactly what Showtime, with their The L Word in Second Life venture (created by SL company Electric Sheep), is all about.

The L Word in Second Life is both a place and an organization of people -- including greeters, event hosts, managers, builders and other workers (both paid and volunteer). The L Word islands in Second Life play home to various show-inspired businesses (like The Planet) and unique shops and hangout spots for visitors (like the L Word dance club). Player's avatars (their digital representations) stop for coffee, shop for clothes, attend live concerts, experiment with speed dating, watch L Word episodes in the amphitheater and even have the chance to meet actors from the show in the game -- Daniela Sea, Rachel Shelley, Pam Grier and others have showed up to delight fans. Showtime workers and player volunteers dedicate their time to planning & hosting events, engaging visitors with conversation and recreation and building and creating more goodies for Second Life gamers.

Beyond the L Word islands, Second Life has much to offer the queer gamer. There are hundreds of ‘gay-friendly’ and ‘gay-only’ locations in the game to visit and hangout at. There are also entire regions dedicated to providing exclusive real estate and housing to gay and lesbian ‘residents’ of Second Life. And for those who think Second Life is mostly just a virtual world of porn and fetish -- well, there is a lot of that going on too for those willing to submit to having their age verified. Most ‘adult’ areas of Second Life are relatively open to gay and lesbian gamers (especially lesbian and bi) who are looking for a little mature ‘play’. But Second Life IS about far more than just virtual sex.What makes Second Life truly unique, in my opinion, is the diverse ability to customize and create your experience within the virtual world. Many hardcore gamers dismiss Second Life outright as some kind of cheap virtual experience filled with too much sex and little else of interest. (Which I think is all about how you choose to spend your time in the world really.) But few can argue that Second Life gives ‘residents’ more creative options to pursue than any other virtual world out there. From customizing your avatar in every way to building your own dream mansion to creating and selling your own virtual products -- there is very little in Second Life that cannot be designed and modified to suit your every whim.

Fashion designers use Second Life tools to test out virtual representations of their designs on virtual models -- and sell the virtual copies to residents there while hawking the tangible counterparts in the real world. Architects use the game to test out building layouts and looks and do virtual walkthroughs for themselves and clients. Artists create virtual representations of their works or do entirely virtual originals, displaying them for sale and appreciation in Second Life shops and museums. Musicians and DJs perform live via the internet in virtual clubs and bars, building new and worldwide fan bases and earning real money in the form of tips from Second Life players. Even scientists and researchers use Second Life to teach about their work, study interesting projects and do virtual research with the help of SL residents.Basically, if you can do it in the real world, you can probably do it in some form in Second Life. For those who are into more traditional gaming, you can even participate in games within Second Life -- ranging from hardcore hack and slash to sci-fi adventures to fantasy role-playing. If you can dream it up, you can probably find it in SL -- or create it yourself.In revisiting Second Life recently, I was pleased and surprised to find this five-year plus virtual world still going amazingly strong. SL is still one of the most populated games on the web and is arguably the largest in “land-mass” of any virtual world. Although lately it seems the world has been a bit less prominent and maybe a bit less populated than it was at its peak, it still generates an immense amount of interest -- and press -- every month.

Some things have changed in SL, but I personally think mostly for the better. ‘Adult’ areas and experiences are being put behind age verification barriers to keep those too young from seeing and participating in things they shouldn’t. Some more ‘disturbing’ and even questionably illegal practices in the game have been banned and put under strict enforcement. Like any country, Second Life has had to grow up and learn to live with a few laws and regulations in order to keep its population at large happy and safe. Granted, not everyone is happy to have any regulation at all and would prefer to go back to the days of virtual ‘anarchy’ in the game. But overall I believe the virtual world of Second Life has matured and become a more comfortable and fun experience for all -- not just those who like to get naked and make virtual porn.Second Life is a world that is hard to abandon once you get into it. It’s very addictive to live a virtual life of fantasy and make-believe -- where you can look like and be anything and everything you want. Which is all to the good if you have the time and want to play and relax. However, like anything addictive, it’s important to set limits and know when it is time to stop or take a break. This is especially true because Second Life is a world in which you can spend unlimited amounts of REAL money without even really being aware of how much you are spending. You could easily drop thousands on virtual toys, clothes, houses and more if you aren’t paying attention. And with our current economic crisis, it’s far more important to worry about how to pay for the gas in your car than that swank new outfit for your virtual avatar!Miss the last "Virtual Lesbian Life"? Read it here.

2 comentarios:

CCopylife, Infimonikal, minouX, and mocoputomoco are the four co technological tools thu fluid use of them is possible in little time. Community-learning-life is based on a intuitive idea: "We all are indigenous". Copylife (community learning life, such a term, was already used from 2005. Is the oldest, in be ruminated, from the four co technological tools. Infimonikal co Mathematical System is a very simple and intuitive "low" numerical co mathematical systems that facilitate enormously the reflections about any subject, just you will going to a very simple system where 0ne, Three, and Eight are the "owners", are the only numbers you need to think, in a very co efficient way, all the incredible (in numbers and qualitative) new science. minouX (my apologising by the "sustraction" of that term, we would change it if any "loyal" problem arise), minouX is a co Operative System that comes from all that new science that look towards integration (pegamento, phenomenology) versus, always in lovely complementarity with, representationism (scissors, tijeras), or desintegration. Your body is a very inteligent co tecnological system whose efficiency increase with a increase in your our phenomenological awareness, "acechar" for shamanism, mindfullness, atencion alerta, inspiración, so called new techonologies, just that term, presuposses something like "operación malaya" for global societies from the beginning of that so interesting techonological revolution. You were being negated, ninguneado, each time in the tv, 20 years ago, any intelectual was "their" image seen by any one. Because no intelectual was interpeled without the pc, as a "brother jumelle, gemelo. In this way people, or certain part of people tended to see that techonologies a something wholy new, when a placid, common sensical, observation permits all us that all process in life is both, a product, and a process. The denial of the character of a historical, and for that, dynamic, dimension, for all that pre-constructed, in the mind of many people, "new" technologies. In this way, umbilical, space- temporal connections were ignored, among that the mere fact that we humans have been the designers of that marvellous creatures, cyborgs. All that "new" co-technological tools take a first position integrating your own co technological, biological actuak powers, with the symbiont: for example, the pc.

MOCOPUTOMOCO is more recent co techonological tool, from that small population of many more. Any way that four co-technological tools sume up very much the "core". mocoputomoco is a co server, feeding in both, inside and out side sensosphere. The pc, you, and all the ecosystem (eco brain) were you are now "connected". One connection is within pc, for example with new york indymedia, and other (the "hard disc,) the real sensations that sume up in that moment your "outside sensosphere" available archives.

Zangaya is a personalized game. I begad designating "my" own one.

What all that co techonologies show us is that they take you to a continuous re co nsideration of your main available archives anyway, what we could call: World 0.0 (BIOLOGY-WITH-CULTURE, versus BIOLOGY /// and /// CULTURE)

INTROITUM: That four new co-tecnological tools will permit to do an efficient K.O. to any of your "teachers". With the powerful co advantage for both, to co understand efficiently all the new science that last times have gifted all us, but after so much systematical censorship by the old guardians of the old order, are now co available for all us.. Across that free course, meanwhile we are using a real, game, in this case zanga is a real cards old game from Guadalhorce, and from Gomera Island. In internet you would easily to note how the game have being constructed. ¿Theta? version

FRASE CORTA: Guarantee in four weeks a fluid flying in the new co-techonological tools

web 0.0 & sensomics re evolution

hello lance, what promising terms!
Echolocation is more simple than it is supossed acording the texts I read about it.
More simple, and more complex.
More simple because we, the environment all, and air, and all are waves ok?
Incredible more rich and complex, because you are 3D aware of that waves dance, you becomes, your body, a quantum biologist practising the last generation technology: sensomics, across echolocation, you are aware thus of the direct network of waves bits, crossing around you, and being chased by your sense powers.
Movement is basic, the surround swallows you when you moves in, this is more "visible" in early morning inside quiet parks where air masses keep quiet and thus discernible
Felicidades colega!

"Life as the Perceptive Dance"

David Abram, in his book "Becoming Animal", elucidates an idea that what is (actualy) alive is not that which is bounded by skin, or feathers, or bark, but rather life is the perceptive DANCE (or interaction). As I glance at a sunset, what is 'alive' is the recognitive moment, the perceptive dance. Indeed, I can feel very alive in those moments of beholding and appreciation.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpEW8_JNYpk

Sus gerencias

del Chef

El Altar, el Estrado y el Telediario:Bipolar Abduction seemed well established, until recently, across the neurosemantic networks of so-here-called, bipolar scientists. New (for Science) Multipolar Abduction, after one century of Noosphere, "soft", incubation (After Pierce), was exponentially increasing across scientific papers. We all are bi-and-multi-bipolar. We all use a certain combination of deduction, induction, and abduction (ab-in-deduction). Multipolar Abduction Recent Papers not just refers in any papers towards the Old, Bipolar Abduction, very well expressed, neurosematincally, in "Old" methods of education-and-or-Communication. Actualy a later development-and-incubation of a single process that begun with the first reference by painting, of christ in a remote cave in Anatolia. In this way, scientist speaking about that excitant field as Multipolar Abduction seems going from their own Bipolar Abduction just as if they were authentic extraterrestrial for a planet called Multipolar Abduction.

If all human and nature technologies sumeing 1000, progresstupidity leave 88 out, and the rest...

Educación Global es...

Global education is an holistic paradigm of education predicated upon the interconnectedness of communities, lands and peoples, the interrelatedness of all social, cultural and natural phenomena, the interlocking nature of past, present and future, and the complementary nature of the cognitive, affective, physical and spiritual dimensions of the human being. It addresses issues of citizenship, development, equity, health, peace, social justice, and environmental sustainability. Its scope encompasses the personal, the local, the regional and bioregional, the national and planetary. Congruent with its precepts and principles, its methodology is experiential, interactive, learner-centered, democratic, convivial, participatory and change-oriented. GLUP

Aquí Hay Tomate

Pachamama es Mujer. Mujer es Semilla

Autogestión - Self Management en Acción

Our Bodies Always Speak as eCommunity Hearts

From Cyborg to Cognisphere

The cyborg that Donna Haraway appropriated in ‘Manifesto for Cyborgs’ as a metaphor for political action and theoretical inquiry has ceased to have the potency it did 20 years ago. While Haraway has turned from a central focus on technoculture to companion species, much important cultural work remains to be done, especially in networked and programmable media. Problems with the cyborg as a metaphor include the implication that the liberal humanist subject, however problematized by its hybridization with cybernetic mechanism, continues as a singular entity operating with localized agency. In a word, the cyborg is not networked enough to encompass the emergent possibilities associated with the Internet and the world-wide web and other phenomena of the contemporary digital era. Instead I propose the idea of the cognisphere. As operational concept and suggestive metaphor, the cognisphere recognizes that networked and programmable media are not only more pervasive than ever before in human history but also more cognitively powerful. It is closely associated with what many researchers regard as a major insight: the idea that the physical world is fundamentally computational. While these scientists regard computation as a physical process, the cultural critic is apt to see it as an over-determined metaphor. The binary choice between seeing the computational universe as a literal description of the physical world and reading it as an over-determined metaphor misses a crucial aspect of contemporary cultural dynamics: the interaction between means and metaphor, technology and cultural presupposition. Taking this dynamic into account leads to a more complete understanding summed up in the aphorism, ‘What we make and what (we think) we are co-evolve together.’

Parar el Mundo. Transfrutar la Sensosfera

The act of breaking free is called "stopping the world." While we partake of surface-only existence, we define reality, ourselves and what is possible for us as individuals according to human consensus reality, accepting the limitations and definitions imposed on us by family, cultural and religious conditioning (among other factors.) The experience of "stopping the world," of freeing ourselves, even momentarily, from all limiting definitions of self and world in a sense destroys both – the self and world we once knew and believed all-encompassing fall away, never to return. Once we have experientially sampled those deeper layers of reality, verifying their existence for ourselves and putting the lie to our previously cherished illusions, we can never again accept limitation. We can never return to who we once were; that person has died. In his place stands a newly initiated shaman...

What you, your body, actualy sense, is logicaly the multiplication of the eficiency in any sensing receptor, whose numbers are not necesary now to mention, but only one figure, enough: last weeks We share 64 (american) billions retinal neurons in B1 classroom, for most INRI, the aromas of the Jardín Botánico, entrying as "Pedro por su Casa" and in this way, how you don't finish captivated by that supermultitude of sensations... each second, with so high power, it is supossed a "illumination unit", in practical sense, a new idea is sprung across B1 environment, and catched by A Mega Brain, thus re producing: 190 billones europedos de nuevas-ideas-compartidas; plis multiply please, again, for the number of actives aromatic principles, from Jardín Botánico, but we follow indoors:

Now we continue the class around the fuente, under the Umbrakulum, where each sound is not perceived only as "your sound", but as a cloud of clouds of sensations and more diferent, and interacting sensations, where to flow, is so easy that, imagine what 12 organismos bípedos can do with a pelota en los pies in front of millions people seeing at home in direct, in real time.

Inverse plis now the equation, imagine that all spectators in the Campo de Futbol are your own retinal neurons: 400 millions on each side... multiply plis in tha park, how many diferent neurons and sensors of a infinitude of micro, meso and macrorganisms (mounts, for example) sharing the instant within a infinitude of worlds, so many of them accesible to your nude eye, this is life, this is your permanent room;

I who write that, is not responsible of when a rainy evening as this, entrying in La Alameda in the bus 20, from UMA, on the curve for taking the north slope, I was seated just after the driver and across the opened window I enjoyed the sounds, wet, when neumaticos rozaban en la curva con el suelo girando la rueda y yo encimita de la questión...